Evaluation of an Online Catalog Assignment
The Scenario Your institution, the Lily and James Potter Memorial Library, has decided to upgrade to a new Web-based OPAC (online public access catalog). You have been appointed to form a committee that will recommend a vendor to provide the software for your new catalog. Your committee should have three or four members. As part of the research process each committee member will access a Web-based catalog, evaluate it, and report back to the committee...
Steps Form a group of 3 or more persons Decide on catalogs to be evaluated Decide on evaluation criteria Each person explores and evaluates an OPAC Compare evaluations and decide on which OPAC to recommend Submit individual evaluations, your comparisons, and your decision
Selecting OPAC Software for Evaluation
Compare oranges to oranges
University Library OPAC
Children’s OPAC
Selecting OPAC Software for Evaluation Utah State University (Encore from Innovative Interfaces) Dartmouth College (WebPAC Pro from Innovative Interfaces) Nottingham Trent University (Primo from ExLibris)
Finding the Corporate Identifier Nottingham Trent University harry potter
Finding the Corporate Identifier Nottingham Trent University
Finding the Corporate Identifier Nottingham Trent University
Selecting Only One Catalog Auburn University
Selecting Only One Catalog Auburn University harry potter
Selecting Only One Catalog Auburn University
Selecting Only One Catalog Auburn University harry potter
Selecting Only One Catalog Auburn University
Finding OPACs for Evaluation
Exploring and Evaluating an OPAC
View as a Novice Do we know what to do? What will the system do?
View as a Novice
Try It Out coming of age in Samoa
Do we know what to do at this point?
Help To save or print information about specific records... WebVoyáge Help Titles To display the record details associated with a title, click on the underlined title... Context-Specific Help
Try It Out
Detailed Record Is this clear?
Help You also have the options... WebVoyáge Help Holdings Information Context-Specific Help
Detailed Record
Search Screen
View as a Novice
Search Screen
Generate an Error Message Leave text box blank
Generate a Error Message Type in gibberish asdfsdf
System Response Is the language benign? Is this message helpful?
Steps Today Form a group with at least 3 persons Decide on catalogs to be evaluated Decide on evaluation criteria
Evaluation Criteria Criteria Error messages are benign and helpful Disagree Agree Positive statement Rating scale
Comparing Catalogs Criteria Error messages are benign and helpful 3 USC There is plenty of lavender 4 Total 5 Harvard Yale